Page 57 of Brazen Criminals

“Do you think verbal contracts should be binding?” I ask. Why the fuck am I quizzing her on business law? Fuck if I know. I guess it’s the safest topic right now, and I can’t sit here silently and let my mind wander. It’s fucking wandering right into a briar patch chock full of poison berries right now.

“I think verbal contracts should be binding, but I also understand that they are nearly impossible to enforce. Think about the standard school lunch line. First, they offer you food. Second, you accept the food. Third, both parties intend to exchange the food for lunch money. And fourth, the kid pays—the consideration. If the kid just eats the food and doesn’t pay, the kid has broken an unwritten contract.” She pauses for a second, her lips tucking over to one side, her brows lowering. “Now, I think school lunch should be a public expense, but the analogy holds. There was no written contract, and you shouldn’t need one for something like a school lunch. But the essence of a contract still holds.”

I chew on my lip for a moment. “That works for things like school lunch. But for business…” I shrug.

She nods. “Of course. Businesses have a lot more at stake than some overcooked mac and cheese.”

I feel myself smiling. We just agreed on something. I’m about to point it out when her name is called.

She vanishes into the depths of the building, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Needing to get the image of her, the feel of her, her damn flowery shampoo scent out of my mind, I snatch a magazine off the table. But after flipping through it without seeing a thing, I know I need something more complicated for my brain to work on.

I try going through some stuff for my finance quiz on Tuesday, but I learned most of the ideas behind the Black-Scholes model last year. Instead of getting caught up in manipulating variables, I’m thinking about Clara again, and why she chose accounting instead of finance for a minor.

I try to trick myself, focusing on her crazy stalker ex instead of the girl herself. Only, my thoughts twist themselves back around and I realize that I don’t want Clara rambling around campus by herself. I have a feeling she’ll fight if she thinks we’re coddling her, though. She’s scared, but not scared enough to let us become her literal shadows.

Damn it. Focus. Back to the bad doc in the making. What do we know about Bryce Mason?

He’s fucking crazy and wants Clara back. He wants to be a doctor. And he’s suspicious of us.

Not that his suspicions are misplaced, but we keep a low profile on purpose—very little social media presence, just enough to not be mistaken as bots—and RJ manages all that for us.

We’re all good students, except for Jansen, who has trouble remembering to get to class and turning in assignments on time, which always ends up dinging his grades.

The only other things I know about the guy are that he stalks both his academic competition and his ex-girlfriend. It’s not enough.

I know RJ is doing a deep social media dive this afternoon, so hopefully he can pull something up, but really, our best resource is Clara. And she has no experience in taking the things someone loves the most and twisting them until they snap, breaking the person in the process. How could she? She’s practically a walking billboard for “good girl.”

I’m honestly surprised how she let loose at the party, the way she moved, the pure sensuality of those fucking hips, the confidence of her stance. She was something else, some other version of herself, and the fucking magic of it made us all reach out, wanting a moment to join her in the trance. And her skin, which should have been gross and sweaty, instead it felt electric. Not one of us wanted to let go.

My dick gets hard remembering, and I stand up to walk it off, dropping the magazine on a table on the other side of the room. I pace, the receptionist glaring at me every second pass. Each time, the urge to flip her off swells, but that’s juvenile and dumb. Iambeing annoying.

I pace until I’m certain the receptionist is going to kick me out. But I just can’t get this girl out of my fucking mind.

Slumping against the wall, I run my hands through my hair, staring at my shoes as the silence stretches. What if something happened back there?

What if her shoulder is totally fucked?

Why didn’t I get to her sooner?

The door to the back clicks open. I whip around just in time to see Clara stepping through. I walkpurposefullytoward her. Not running. Walking. “Hey,” she says.

“You good to go?” I ask.

“Yeah. I’ll need to get an ice pack and a heating pad, but there’s no permanent damage. I should heal enough to run again in two weeks, so hopefully, I can still catch my race.”

I nod, holding the first door open for her, then rushing ahead and getting the second. She shoots me a look, but I ignore it. I know I’m being weird. I clear my throat. “That’s good. We have ice packs at the house, but no heating pads. We’ll stop at the drugstore on the way back.”

She sneaks me a grin. “I’m buying my own heating pad,” she says.

I raise an eyebrow at her but say nothing. I’m buying the damn thing, and she can’t stop me. I couldn’t keep her from getting hurt, but I’ll at least help her fucking get better. That decided, I bound down to the truck so I can be ready to lift Clara in this time. No way I’m crawling around on the blacktop to retrieve another fucking shoe.

And if I get another chance to cradle her curves in my palms? I can decide how I feel about that later.

Chapter 31

Clara

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